Matilda: A Distributed UML Virtual Machine for Model-Driven Software Development

This paper describes a distributed UML virtual machine, called Matilda, which allows developers to design their applications as UML models and directly execute the models. Matilda accepts the UML models that developers define (class and sequence diagrams), validates them against the UML metamodel, constructs a Java abstract syntax tree (JAST) that corresponds to the user-defined models, and executes Java byte code generated from the JAST. The architecture of Matilda is designed as a pipeline (or sequence) of plugins. Different plugins implement different functionalities in Matilda, such as importing UML models, validating UML models and constructing a JAST. The pipeline architecture allows Matilda to flexibly configure its structure and behavior by replacing a plugin with another one or changing the order of plugins. Also, Matilda’s pipeline can be distributed. Matilda can spread plugins over multiple hosts in the network and seamlessly connect them to form a pipeline. This improves Matilda’s performance by distributing its workload to different hosts. It also enables distributed model-driven development in which developers can build, transform, deploy and execute UML models at physically distributed places. This paper overviews Matilda’s architectural design and describes implementation details of its major plugins.